Monday, November 16, 2009

Reason why I work from home, #42

Today my advisor sent me a "report" to edit for him.

I spent 30 minutes fixing typos, making the punctuation and formatting consistent, and deleting half-sentences (because he likes to randomly start sentences and never finish them).

While I enjoy a good edit, I was annoyed by this editing for a variety of reasons:

  1. The minor changes I made would have been fixed if he actually re-read what he wrote.
  2. The content wasn't fabulous, nor that clear. But I did not put in the effort to fix it because this report is not something that is peer-reviewed, nor is my name on it.
  3. My name is not on it.
  4. My labmate's name is on it.
  5. My labmate's name who is on it did not (to my knowledge) read nor edit it.
  6. Last year, when this report was due, my name was on it, I was my boss's RA and I spent 2 incredibly late nights in my boss's office writing the entire thing and making many of the figures.

The only positive to this is that, because I am working at home, I didn't have to actually meet with my advisor to discuss this report. That would have been far worse and I doubt I would have been able to hide any frustration.

2 comments:

Becky said...

Umm.. just asking but who is the adviser and who is the student?

Becky said...

(not literally, my point is that it seems like your roles are reversed.)